Fire
by silversurf4
Summary: Inspiration taken from the recent LA fires. Crews and Reese have to investigate the death of two firemen who didn't die in the fire.
1. Chapter 1 Fire

**Fire….**

It was hot…beyond hot…stifling…LA was not like this….not supposed to be like this.

The city was on fire. Everywhere a haze hung in the air. Thick black acrid smoke rolled off the hills into the city, coating everything in pall of ash. Every breath was labored and tasted of dirt and ash. At night you could see the fires although they were still miles away because where the black, quiet, darkness of the mountains should be an ghostly shade of flickering light edged in against the darkness.

Charlie stood on his darken portico, lit by nothing more than the greenish cast from the swimming pool. A storm was approaching, a fire storm – it felt like earthquake weather. Even the coyotes felt it, they wanted to howl and every once in a while he would hear them yip, but they stifled themselves and sat eerily silent.

The preceding days had been dark with death. Two firefighters lost their lives battling a fire intentionally set by someone. Normally, fire investigation was the venue of LAFD but this was homicide and therefore LAPD and this time Crews and Reese drew the case.

Firemen are a breed apart; slightly crazed men and women who danced with the devil daily, hotshots, smoke jumpers and death cheaters who - when not fighting fire, worked out vigorously, barbequed and lived in a little collective, keeping to themselves. They had a code like cops that Charlie respected. They did not leave their men behind and would risk life and limb for another firefighter - even one they did not know. Charlie thought it was as admirable a profession as one could aspire to.

But indications were this fire was set by someone who knew a lot about fire, maybe one of their own and that made investigating it doubly hard. Beyond the normal challenges, there was the wall of silence outsiders could not penetrate. Just like cops.

It was like a puzzle inside a bag that you had to assemble without seeing. He ran his hands through his short red hair sighed heavily and looked back at the smoke sinking into the valley near his house. Danger was nearby.

************************************************************************************************

Dani Reese sat staring at a different kind of trouble, playing with fire.

The clear bottle of liquor sat on her kitchen table mocking her. It was a rough week – rough enough for her to break down and buy a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and throw it in the freezer. She'd taken it out hours ago and now beads of sweating rolled off the chilled container making an ever widening ring on her table, but Dani wouldn't move the bottle because to touch it would mean crossing a line – to a place she didn't want to go.

She traced patterns on the table top with her finger tips in the condensation. She chipped tiny slivers of ice off the bottle with her nail. It was so very hot, so very hard this week. The intense heat resulted in rolling blackouts, meaning her house never really got cool enough to stay comfortable. Dani could feel the sweat roll down her back to the waist band of her shorts. The crisp, cool bite of the vodka called to her like a soft song and a comfortable bed. _Come on – just one, it'll be okay, _it said seductively.

Dani needed to talk herself out of her infatuation with the vodka or to call her sponsor, but it was late, really late, too late to call Lou. She convinced herself that everyone she knew would be asleep, safely slumbering in their comfortable beds spooned against their significant other, breathing in the peaceful sounds of another soul's heartbeat and breath; company - even when unconscious. Dani sat there alone - with her desire.

She fished her cell phone from her pocket, toying with the one number she knew she could call, but determined not to be dependant on anyone. She steadfastly refused to push the button that would bring him to her, staring at his name on her caller id – Crews.

Dani knew he would come. He would begin moving the moment his phone flashed her number, driving the canyons in that dark little sports car at exhilarating speeds, without knowing what she needed, just her number at this time of night would bring him to her.

What Dani was afraid of was that her need for the and safety of Charlie Crews was supplanting her other addictions. At this point, if she examined her urges clinically, she knew she wanted Crews more than she did the drink.

**************************************************************************************************

Charlie thumbed open his cell phone and scrolled to the number he wanted to call. She was probably in bed, _someone else's bed_ he thought darkly, asleep. Someone other than him had his nose buried in the hair at the base of her neck, breathing in the citrus scent of her shampoo, with her pulled tightly against his chest and wrapping his arms around her tiny torso. He needed not to think about his partner, that just made things hotter…more uncomfortable.

He never should have kissed her, Charlie thought. It just confused things. She was Tidwell's girl. But there in that orange grove in the rush of exhilaration they'd both felt after escaping Roman, he'd done just that. He didn't think about it then and even if he had - Charlie wasn't sure that he could have stopped himself.

She rolled up in Bodner's car wearing this curious little smile that reached all the way to her eyes. He only meant to embrace her, but she was so warm, so fine, so much like everything he missed out on and still wanted from life. She was his - for just that moment and he lowered his head to hers and kissed her gently. To Charlie's surprise, she didn't push him away, she deepened and returned his kiss and that was when Charlie's grip on the world loosened and reality as he knew it spun out of control.

She was fire. She was like playing with matches or razor blades. Dani Reese was full of sharp edges, acute angles. Charlie knew she would cut him in a million places, burn him all over his delicate pale skin and still he found he couldn't stay away from her.

Before he remembered doing it, the phone was ringing… she answered with a quiet "hey" like it was completely normal that he'd call her at 2:46AM and almost like she'd been waiting for his call. "I can't sleep" Charlie said.


	2. Chapter 2 All That Remains

**All That Remains….. (Two days before) **

As they picked through the charred remains of people's lives, Charlie was struck again by the fickleness of both life and fire. Some houses remained untouched, standing with just singed shingles or melted garden hoses in the yard and ten paces away, right next door there was nothing left but a concrete foundation, the smoking hulk of a refrigerator and some charred personal possessions. The rest was reduced to ash, rapidly being taken away by the Santa Anna winds.

"People's whole lives were in these houses" Dani remarked incredulously.

"No" Charlie stated standing very still amongst the rubble and ruin "things were in these houses – life exists outside - apart from things".

Dani stopped and looked hard at him. He wasn't trying to be funny. He was speaking the truth and he ought to know. Before her stood a man from whom everything was taken, his whole life burnt away by a guilty verdict - after a mockery of a trial. And yet, Dani saw him as tempered steel, strong yet, flexible. He remained - when all his things were taken away - alive – more alive than most people she knew, but sometimes like now - Charlie seemed hollow, empty, not there at all. It made her sad to see him reduced to this.

Every once in awhile, when he turned just right, Dani saw a whole new side of Charlie Crews, one that was unfathomably deep and she knew they had just scratched the surface in their two year partnership. It was as if sunshine was the outer coat, a slick veneer, but beneath that shiny surface Crews was like a deep well – there was no telling how deep, but certainly dark and sometimes scary. Still Dani felt closer to Crews than anyone else on the planet, but she instinctively knew there was so much more to know – so much more to her usually smiling, cheerfully partner.

But Charlie was not smiling today. Something about the devastation and the degree of loss – even if it was just stuff – shook her partner to his core. He seemed slightly off balance, not himself and it just made her want to put some distance between the smoking remains and them.

"You're right, there's nothing here but stuff" she concluded. "Let's go find the truth somewhere else".

"Truth is hard to find. Sometimes it changes." Charlie said under his breath, almost to himself, but Dani still heard him.

**************************************************************************************************

"Thanks for all your help" Dani said somewhat facetiously to the group of firemen assembled outside Ladder Company 56, who had been stonewalling them all morning.

"Sure thing, beautiful. You ever wanna do more than just talk – come back over. Only leave your guard dog at home" one particularly bold firefighter said sneering at her. He was muscular, cut and full of himself. Charlie took a step back in his direction, leaving Dani no choice but to intervene.

"Hey" she said capturing his eyes "he's not worth it." she continued quietly once she had his attention and his arm by the elbow. Charlie's dark look worried her. "You don't have to protect me from them."

He nodded and let her lead him away. The men laughed, but Charlie just lengthened his stride to catch up with his smaller fast moving partner. "I don't like it when they talk to you like that."

"I'm used to it." She said flatly.

"Doesn't mean I have to like it….. Or that you should have to put up with it" he pouted.

"What bothers you more? Their interest or their arrogance?" Dani teased.

"I don't like either" he countered with a raised his eyebrow at her implication, while dodging the actual question.

"Just think of it like this… Who am I leaving with?" she smiled brightly.

"Would it be wrong to stick my tongue out at them?" he joked relaxing the further they got from the leering group of loudmouths.

"No…. it would be really wrong if I did" Dani smiled with a hint of seduction in her voice.

Charlie gulped "You're right, that would be so wrong, so bad. Can I watch?"

Dani just laughed out loud drawing all the men's attention and then pointedly stuck out her tongue, before climbing into the car and slamming the door. Charlie's grin hit the megawatt range as several of the firemen's jaws dropped open.

"Now that was fun" Dani said as she turned the engine over. Charlie had to agree.

He enjoyed the fact that Dani was becoming more and more herself with him everyday and he liked who she was behind the dark shades and the hard appearance. She was witty, sometimes wicked and possessed a very caustic sense of humor that she hid very well at work, but sometime she let him see. They were falling into a rhythm like a couple and while that part of him that was sexually attracted to her, constantly wanted more, he knew the trust they were building was important for them both. Sex would come if she wanted it later, but for now she was the closest person on earth to him and Charlie couldn't imagine working or playing with anyone else.

Ted had even remarked on the waning cavalcade of young women Charlie used to traipse in and out of the mansion before. Since that day in the orange grove, Charlie simply lost interest in the candy store variety of women. The woman he wanted was dark, rich, textured and complex – like the coffee she lived off of.

Dani Reese was a one of a kind addiction and Charlie had it bad.

**************************************************************************************************

"How come all firemen seem to smoke?" Charlie wondered aloud. "All day, every day they choke down buckets of smoke and then whenever they aren't doing that they smoke like chimneys, I don't get it."

"I don't think it's important to them that you understand their need to smoke. Clearly they have lungs powerful enough to suck start a bus." Dani said tersely, clearly annoyed at the lack of cooperation they'd received from the fire crew, as they pulled away in their car.

A group of recalcitrant firemen stood in a huddle all smoking cigarettes as the detectives left empty handed. It was a fruitless effort – and a fruitless morning, and somehow Crews had somehow neglected to put even one small piece of fruit in the car or the pockets of his suit. He deduced this after patting himself down twice, opening and closing the glove box thrice and still coming up empty handed.

"Let's get some lunch" he suggested.

"Its 10AM Crews." She said sounding exasperated.

"How about a snack then? Orange juice? Coffee? Come on, Reese?" he pled like a little boy

She relented and pulled into a nearby diner pronouncing "I could go for coffee."

As they slid into the red vinyl covered booth, it began - Charlie's daily effort to infuriate her by talking about just about anything that sprang to his mind. Dani learned he didn't do it to irritate her that was simply a byproduct. Charlie talked when he was nervous, or thinking though a problem in his head or just to fill a void sometimes, but he talked – a lot. In quiet times, when it was too quiet, she found herself missing the sound of his voice, just talking, saying nothing of import. Just the tone and timbre of his voice calmed her, evened out the rough spots.

"Did you ever smoke?" he turned in his seat to pose the question and observe her answer. Charlie learned over time that Dani's non-verbal responses said more than her mouth ever did and as a result he almost always looked at her for answers instead of merely listening. She sighed realizing this was normal for them. He asked, poked, prodded, dug and she hid, avoided and ducked his questions.

But today too tired to avoid and she just answered simply "Once, I was fourteen, maybe fifteen. My dad caught us. Made me smoke a whole pack of Marlboros Reds – cowboy killers – got so sick, I never touched them again." She squirmed a bit recounting an uncomfortable childhood memory. "Probably the nicest thing he ever did for me."

"But he didn't do it to be nice" Charlie finished her thought.

"No. Jack Reese doesn't do nice." She said somewhat sadly. "Sometimes if the wind is just right and I haven't eaten – the smell still makes me sick to my stomach" she confided quietly.

"Did you know there is an entire business based on cigarettes in prison?" he offered, changing the subject to take her away from the painful memory.

"No. No I didn't" she said flatly. Charlie always did that. He substituted his painful or embarrassing memory to shield her from hers, even if he was the one who brought it up to begin with. He protected her - even from her past it seemed.

"But then you really don't want to know about that do you?" he asked plainly with a small smile.

"No. Not really, no." Dani said. But after a long silence, watching Crews eat blueberry pancakes, she stared at the steam rising off her coffee and quietly inquired "Is that how you met Ted?"

Charlie looked hard at her for a long moment gauging her true level of interest. Dani hardly ever mentioned his time inside and even more rarely asked him about it.

"No I met Ted at a time when I was learning who I really was and he helped me decide." He responded somewhat cryptically.

"I don't know what that means" she said looking across the booth at him.

"I think it means that some people come into your life at a time when you need them to and they help you become who you were meant to be" Charlie said hoping to clarify.

"Like us?" Dani asked in a rare moment of introspection voiced aloud.

"Yes" Charlie said dropping his fork and wiping syrup off his chin. "Exactly like us" he smiled.

"That I get" Dani said softly, looking deeply into her coffee cup

Charlie was always so pleased when Dani followed something he hinted at and was able to grasp it without explanation. This happened a lot at work where they had an uncanny ability to finish one another's thoughts and sentences. When they were in synch, they were powerful, their connection uncanny and almost impossible to stop. He wondered sometimes if that link bled over into their "not work" times if either of them would be able to control it. It was a prospect that both exhilarated and frightened him; that someone so young, so different, could understand him so completely. They were so different but in some ways so much the same.

"So these firefighters, tough nuts to crack huh?" Dani said skillfully redirecting the conversation to the case.

"Yup" Charlie said eyeing his orange juice, knowing their moment was past. "Tight knit, incestuous bunch of distrusting souls…kinda like us cops" his smirk dark with a humor that didn't reach his eyes.

"We must be approaching this wrong. We were treating this like they were civilians - so how would we do this if we were investigating a cop killing?" Dani wondered aloud.

"That's the right question, Detective Reese." Charlie smiled.


	3. Chapter 3 Holes in the Fabric of Time

**Holes in the Fabric of Time…..(One day prior)**

"So everyone at the firehouse is one big happy family. They all love each other, never fight and no one owes each other money, stole the other guy's girl or has the slightest grudge" Dani pronounced citing the rosy relationship painted by the rest of the Ladder Company.

All evidence to the contrary - two dead firemen lay on the slab in the coroner's office.

"Sound like the Neanderthals we met yesterday?" she continued.

"They just didn't seem that enlightened" Charlie winked as his use of Zen brought an unintended smirk to her face. Dani tried very hard to stay no-nonsense, tough and unflinching at work, but Charlie made it hard. He was able to make her smile often now and even laugh occasionally, even though she tried not to.

On two separate tables, lay the charred remains of two firemen, Sergeant James Willis and Lieutenant Gavin Newburn, their bodies curled up in a pugilistic attitude, a function of the effect of heat and fire on underlying musculature making them appear like two blackened boxers frozen in time. The melted turndown gear molded to their bodies resulting in the pathologist having to cut the clothing away, a task that could easily take all day. The pathologist had managed to get into the torso only and remarked tersely on his findings.

"Maybe that's why underneath these crispy critters who you'll find did not die from fire or smoke, but rather from anterior perforating gunshot wounds, there is evidence of homicide, Detectives" the very focused pathologist pronounced, hoping it would make the Detectives go away, especially the guy. He kept touching stuff, the pathologist watched him obliquely while wielding a scalpel, which he really should pay attention to the business end of.

"Doc, does working around burned up corpses ever make you hungry for barbeque?" Charlie asked. Dani just rolled her eyes as the doctor peered at Charlie over his visor.

Dani just continued without acknowledging Crews comment "so any bullets in there?"

The pathologist stopped staring at Crews and turned to Dani "perforating gunshot wounds are through and through. Sorry, Detective, no bullets, just bullet holes and nicked ribs, spine, wound paths evident in the underlying tissue."

"So we're back to square one. No gun, no bullets, just two dead firemen who didn't die from the fire they were fighting." Dani put it very succinctly. The pathologist just nodded and returned to de-fleshing the remains.

"I'll let you know if anything odd comes back in the tox. But no smoke in the lungs, just the wound paths, I'm calling them both homicides by GSW." He pronounced clinically.

"Back to the scene?" Crews asked his face tight with concern.

"Back to the scene" Dani stated.

"Sure you aren't hungry?" Charlie asked as they walked out the large double doors of the morgue into the fresh, clean air and sunlight. Dani just scowled at him.

"What? It makes me hungry…." Charlie smiled.

"Everything makes you hungry" Dani said donning her sunglasses against the glaring sun. "You just don't want to go back there, I know" she said quietly.

"Do you wanna know why?" he asked somewhat sadly.

"Because it reminds you of things you lost?" she offered.

"There are things you lose that can never be replaced. You think they are just things, but then they aren't, they are places in time, memories of the past." He paused. "I know the past isn't real, but I can still feel it." He added softly.

Dani leaned against his side and looked up at him. "Can you feel that? That's the present, now. And if you squint real hard and wish...maybe even that future you don't believe in either." She said smiling shyly at him.

She somehow knew just how and when to buoy him against the darkness that lapped at his heels. Charlie smiled as he followed her down the stairs to the car.

*************************************************************************************************************************

Glass and broken pottery crunched under their feet as they again picked through the rubble in the home where the two firemen were found charred to a crisp. "So if they were shot here and died here and they shot each other…then there should be at least two guns here…somewhere" Charlie began poking through ash and detritus with a stick he'd managed to procure somewhere.

"But if there were shot by someone else then no gun may be present at all and the bullets probably lodged in something that was reduced to ash or melted into slag" Dani thought and recited grimly. "In which case we never solve this case" Dani continued glumly.

"Then let's believe in my version and hope it's the right one, so I can stop smelling like an ashtray" Crews remarked back "Ted's about ready to make me start undressing in the garage"

Dani snorted to stifle an image of Charlie in boxers in his garage that sprang to mind unbidden. He looked up perplexed.

"Ok so, it we believe in your version... of this fractured fairy tale, then we clear this and get some rest. God, it's so hot" She said mopping sweat from her hairline at the base of neck. She half expected him to pull some Zen rabbit out of his hat, but Charlie continued on without the Zen.

"And we don't think this is a murder/suicide because who shoots themselves in the torso to commit suicide?" Crews questioned, resulting in a shrug and non-committal nod from his partner.

"If it's a murder suicide…why here? Doesn't make any sense" she snorted.

"I've rarely found murder or suicide to make sense." Charlie commented darkly.

"Do you know what the main difference between fiction and reality is?" he asked and then answered without giving her time to say no - answered. "Fiction has to be believable."

This caused Reese to look up from her examination of her shoes, which were covered in soot and ash. "I'm gonna smell like I rolled in a campfire for a week." She complained to no one in particular.

"We need screens to sift all this ash. Wood grips will have burnt off. All that might be left are the slugs and the frames of any guns. And I quit playing in the sand when I turned seven, I'm calling CSI." Dani said pulling out her cell phone to summon CSI.

Charlie toed through the soot and ash, as he listened to Reese talk to CSI. His mind drifted and wandered like the ash carried on the light winds. He thought about his life before prison and all the "stuff" he'd acquired that he thought was important and irreplaceable. He considered his life now and his lack of "stuff", while his attention drifted back to his diminutive partner and the large part she played in his life.

A car drove past slowly, looking out of place, it's shiny, exterior freshly washed a bright red contrasting against the shades of drab grey that coated the rest of the visible world. The car's occupants stared out the window in raw, unfiltered shock at the transformation of their once nice lush, green suburban neighborhood with boats and trampolines into something that resembled a lunar landscape.

For some reason Charlie's mind flashed back to the night he wrecked first car and his panic about how much trouble he would be in. He could still see his mother telling him calmly "It's just a car Charlie. It doesn't matter so long as you're okay". His mother was always so Zen, he thought smiling.

"What?" Reese said as she noted his smile.

"Nothing…. It's just stuff right? Nobody kills someone over stuff - do they?" Crew responded with a question he really didn't expect her to answer.

Dani regarded him ruefully, acknowledging his strange mood, but not commenting on it. She snapped her cell shut and noticed how loud the noise seemed surrounded by all this death. The area was devoid of life, not one bird sang, there were no trees left to rustle in the wind, no flags snapped on their poles. There were no dogs barking, no children on bicycles, no jangle of ice cream truck tunes as it rolled through calling out the kids on a hot day. It was just dead - everywhere.

_Who were they kidding? People killed each other over "stuff" every day. Motive that's what this case was lacking and to find motive you had to know who was dead, and then you could find out why. _

"Crews? Where'd you get the stick?" Reese questioned.

Charlie gestured to the sole remaining house on the street, where the withered vegetation showed signs of heat but stubbornly stood against all odds, whole and unburned.

"There's still nothing here" Charlie remarked.

"I thought there couldn't be nothing." Dani teased him with his Zen.

Even when he didn't think she was listening, she was. Sometimes days or even weeks later, some random bit of Zen would come back to haunt him like she was keeping a list somewhere and rolling it out to remind him that she was listening – she was there.

Charlie's eyes focused, unfocused and synapses fired. "There can't be nothing" he repeated absently, subconsciously but aloud. "There must be something" he continued thinking and speaking his stream of consciousness. "If there is something, then someone saw it. Someone always sees it."

His eyes drifted to the single house on the opposite street which survived the inferno. "Why that house and not this one?"

Dani did not interrupt when Charlie was thinking out loud having been partnered with him long enough to get past annoyance - she now respected his process. She took in the house. It was singed but still whole. Garden hoses snakes across the lawn and roof, melted in spots they oozed water, but the structure remained standing.

That wasn't luck – that was fight, dogged determination and an unwillingness to yield to the unstoppable. Someone had stayed after the evacuation order, stayed and fought, fought the beast and won.


	4. Chapter 4 Respite

**Respite…….**

They struck out at the house, it was dark and quiet. Either the resident was not home or was too exhausted from his fight to answer the door. Crews called a uniform patrol over and asked them to keep an eye on the house for signs of occupation and they retreated to the station to research the background of the two dead men.

"What you said before about fairy tales...." he began as soon as they were back in the car. "Were you more a Rocky and Bullwinkle Show kinda kid or more a Disney sort?"

Charlie always came up with the oddest questions. "Come on Crews. I'm running on empty here. Can you cut me some slack on the twenty questions today?" She asked annoyed.

Charlie fell silent and almost immediately she regretted chastizing him. "What do you want know? Did I clap for the fairies? Was I the little girl clapping to save Tinkerbell? Did I believe?" Dani asked.

It wasn't exactly where Charlie was headed, but suddenly struck by the image a young innocent Dani clapping to prove she believed in fairies made him want to know. He nodded.

"Crews? I can't hear your head rattle?" She chanced a glance in his direction. He nodded again very solemnly, like he was learning some arcane secret.

"Yes, I believed" she said softly and somewhat sadly. He said nothing for a long time then Crews told her quietly "I did too."

**********************************************************************************************************************

Back at the station, everyone in the bay was fanning themselves, sleeves rolled up, ties off and collars open and it was obvious LAPD was suffering from the rolling black outs too. Computers were up and down and after about three crashes in two hours, with uninterruptible power supplies screeching in the background, Charlie quickly concluded they needed "blended coffee drinks" as he watched sweat bead on Dani's lip and her hair become damp at the back of her neck, again. Dani wasn't going to take much persuading as Tidwell hovered and annoyed her about their progress.

Charlie suddenly had an epiphany. "Hey, why don't we get iced coffee and go to my house?" he whispered conspiratorially "I have a pool and wireless internet and no hall monitors" he gestured to the Captain who passed by their desk again like he was doing laps.

"That's a bad idea for a number of reasons." Reese answered back without looking up.

"Name a few" he challenged.

"Think of it, Reese. Cool water lapping at us, while we research the dead guys on my speedy internet connection and soak up a little sun" he continued to tempt her.

"Thought you said you didn't tan" she countered with a raised eyebrow, but she was now looking at him. Interest he concluded. She's definitely thinking about it.

"Okay, possible down side is that you have to put 45 SPF sun block on my back" he smiled brightly. "If they need us, they'll call" he stated the obvious shaking his cell phone. "We can sit here and stew in 95 degree office, with computers that crash every fifteen minutes or make lemonade" he offered.

"Huh" Dani didn't follow and her bedraggled look made him even more determined to drag her away from all this.

"You know? If life hands you lemons…." He left the axiom hanging.

Dani chewed on her bottom lip and seemed to consider his offer, when the power went down again plunging them all into relative darkness and the constant chirp of UPS units. "Okay, you win." She said "But we have to swing by my house so I can pick up a suit."

Charlie already imagining Dani in a bikini just stared dully. "A swim suit" she offered. "Hello, earth to Crews?"

"Uh- huh and we'll need fruit" he said. Dani didn't even ask why anymore.

********************************************************************************************************************************

Charlie emerged from the house carrying a pitcher of "mocktails' – virgin strawberry daiquiris while Dani lay on her stomach on a chaise lounge with a pencil in her teeth furiously clicking and wheeling through the internet open source info on the two dead firemen.

She was tanned and fit and nice to look at, but he tried hard not to. Charlie found it difficult not to look because Dani's 'swimsuit was a nice revealing aqua bikini and after climbing out of the pool with her hair wet, he was pretty sure there would be no sleeping tonight unless he wanted to experience x-rated dreams about his partner.

"Crews… Crews… you here?" Dani's voice brought him back to reality.

"Why are you so red?" she asked watching a blush rise from his neck to his face.

"Uh….the sun… remember? I don't do well in the sun." he stammered.

"Uh- huh" she grinned "then how come it's only your face that's red?" she teased. Dani knew full well the effect she had on men and was deriving a kind of perverse pleasure from the level of discomfort her normally imperturbable partner was experiencing after being caught appreciating her.

Charlie gulped hard even though he was well aware she was toying with him.

Dani rolled over, swung her leg off the side of the lounger, got up and walked towards him, as Charlie focused on his feet until hers came into view. Little red nails shined up at him from her tanned feet.

"That for me?" she questioned coyly. Charlie wasn't sure if she meant the daiquiris or the impressive hard on he was sporting, but he wasn't keen to clarify. Luckily the large bath towel he hung around his neck covered him down to below his trunks so it wasn't readily apparently. Charlie said nothing, but nodded.

Dani relented and took the tray from him, putting it on the table and pouring them both tall frothy drinks. "To a day away from the office and the heat" she said handing him a glass.

Without straws daiquiris leave an impressive mustache and as Crews licked his lips clean he watched Dani watch him from under her long lashes. _So it wasn't just him that felt it,_ he thought.

"You better sit down and let me put some of this industrial strength sun block on you or you'll have to be hospitalized Crews" she laughed. He sat compliantly as she removed the towel from his neck and dropped it into his lap. He waited for the cool liquid to make contact with his skin, but Dani instead put in her hands and warmed it. All Charlie felt were her small, skilled hands gliding over his shoulders and back, massaging the tight muscles in his shoulders, travelling down to his back to his narrow waist and over his shoulders to his chest and pectoral muscles.

As Dani's slid her hands over Charlie, lost in the feeling of his skin, Charlie captured them both in his and held her still against him. She froze for a moment and then relaxed leaning fully into his back. He felt her shadow cross his shoulders as she leaned down and placed a delicate kiss on his neck. "You have freckles everywhere" she remarked quietly.

"I've been burned before" he mumbled as he released her hands. But Dani just left them there on his chest over his heart as she held him against her for a moment longer.

Then she abruptly broke contact and told him "I think you can get the front". Just that quick, she was all business again, returning to the case and retreating from him.

"I think I found our motive" she pronounced retrieving the laptop and shielding it from the sunlight. "Turns out our two firemen have something in common and you'll never guess what?" she said coyly.

"Let's see…most common motives for murder are money, drugs and….women" Charlie while casting a look her way that said "_I bet at some point, some man has contemplated murder over you sweetheart". _

The heat in Charlie's glance made Dani look away. She wanted him, she wanted to be close to him, but she didn't want things to go wrong like they usually did – Charlie was far too important for her to lose and it made her cautious, hesitant and wary. _Did he feel the same things? Had he stopped her because of the danger or because he didn't want to go there?_

"Where are you going?" he asked as she closed the laptop and walked away from him.

'To cool off. Remember you asked me here to swim right?" She walked slowly into the pool at the shallow end by the steps, dragging her fingers in the water behind her.

"How is it? The water?" Charlie asked.

"Nice. Come and see." Dani countered as she slid under the surface.

God he was playing with fire and it was already so damned hot, he thought.

She swam to the edge of the pool and put her tanned arms over the stone edge resting her chin on them. Charlie was not certain he could stand at this point; she simply took his breath away and tied his stomach in knots, not to mention what she did to points lower.

"Charlie?" she questioned quietly. That was what did it for him – hearing his given name off her lips – not Crews, but Charlie. He stood up dropped the towel, not caring if she saw how she effected him. He figured when he hit the cool water his problem would go away.

Charlie walked to the deep end of the pool and stepped in - literally and metaphorically.

The cool water washed over him and all the sounds of the worlds ceased. All he could hear was the cascade of bubbles escaping from under him and the temperature dropped a full ten degrees, maybe fifteen. He stayed under a few seconds, collecting himself and then pushed off the bottom, broke the surface and opened his eyes.

Charlie's head emerged from the water and his eyes blinked opened. They were the color of the pool water, a clear, haze less, blue-green. Rivulets of water streamed from his red hair down his freckled face to his chin which was now becoming fuzzier as the day waned with a light haze of reddish blonde hair instead of some swarthy five o'clock shadow. The light shone off his angular features and he smiled at her with a mouth full of straight white teeth.

"Better?" she asked.

"Much" he answered quietly breast stroking towards her, never taking his eyes off hers.

"This was a good idea" Dani admitted. "It's been so hot I haven't slept in days."

Charlie stroked fluidly past her and reached the steps where he reversed his course and leaned back on his elbows lazily kicking his legs in the shallows and staring at her.

"So… money, drugs or a woman?" he asked and when she failed to answer right away prompted "the dead firemen?"

Dani snorted "sounds like a bad name for a band – The Dead Firemen". This caused Charlie to laugh to and effectively dispelled the tension between them. She swam to the steps and mirrored his body position and began to explain.

With their return to the familiar rhythm of work, they both eased considerably and Charlie found himself genuinely enjoying this side of Dani Reese, the one that laughed and blew bubbles in the water in front of her chin.

He imagined her as a little girl and how incredibly bad he'd wished he'd known her then. But then he realized she would have been just a child, _what a difference fifteen years in prison makes_ he thought wryly. Again he floated away from her, thinking about their disparate pasts and their hopefully conjoined future.

Dani knew Charlie had left the conversation from the faraway look in his eyes, but far from annoying her she took the respite to examine her introspective partner. He was an enigma to her at times and at other times she understood him so completely it was as if they were swimming in the same stream. Something about the fires, seriously bothered him and it was more than the case, more than the heat, it was something hidden that he didn't want her to know.

She splashed water at him "Okay Aquaman. As much as I've enjoyed this time away from work, we have some people we need to interview and the day isn't getting any cooler. Where's your shower?"

Charlie stared at her "you wanna use my shower?" Shaking his head he stated again "of course, you wanna use my shower. Um, come on I'll show you." For some inexplicable reason when Charlie reached down and took her hand, Dani simply let him lead her through his giant house, their wet feet making funny splashing, squeaky sounds on the marble.

They moved silently, like teenagers sneaking out of the house to beat curfew.

"Why are we sneaking around?" she asked softly.

'I don't know" Charlie whispered. He could have sworn she giggled. As he turned to face her on the stairs, Charlie suddenly stopped. "It's up there, in my bedroom, first door on the right" he released her hand, unable or unwilling to go any further. Somehow crossing the threshold to his bedroom hand in hand with Dani Reese in their state of undress was something Charlie Crews couldn't do.

Something sad crossed Dani's face, something bordering on disappointment and it made him reach for her - even though he knew he should not. He brushed back a strand of her wet hair and his knuckles grazed her cheek. She looked up and her dark eyes captured his, she didn't blink, she didn't look away, she was there with him completely.

The next thing Charlie knew he was kissing her, his hand tangled in her hair, her body molded against his and her tongue dueling with his in a heated exchange.

As they broke apart breathless, he began to apologize immediately "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…." He began.

"Charlie…shhh… it's okay" she said stepping up another step. She leaned close and kissed him gently once on the lips and then again on his forehead. "I'm gonna get that shower now."

Charlie stood on the stairs aching for the heat of her body against his. The fire now didn't seem nearly as hot or nearly as close. It was like they'd torn through the fabric of time and existed somewhere apart and different from they rest of the tortured city.

Charlie knew they had to go back, and yet you can never go back – can you?


	5. Chapter 5 Facing Down Demons

**Facing Down Demons….**

Willis and Newburn had a girl in common and her name was "Connie". She was a 42' catamaran which they had gone in on together. It always seemed like a good idea at first; then money troubles came calling and it could turn friends into enemies.

It sort of reminded Charlie of himself and Tom Seybolt. Despite the fact Tom Seybolt was ten years his senior, he'd taken Charlie on as a partner based largely on Charlie's friendliness and ability to draw customers, cops, into the bar. The bar wasn't making a lot of money, but they were holding their own. Charlie still worked full time as a beat cop and tended bar after shift and on his days off. Tom worked the bar most days, took deliveries and his wife kept the books and helped out.

They were all so young and their nights were filled with drinking, dancing, music, laughter and good times; until the night they were filled with blood and butchery.

Charlie stood on the dock looking at the boat. "Seems so simple"

"They shot each other in the middle of a major fire, over a boat?" Dani scowled.

"Seriously over a boat? That makes no sense at all" she seemed genuinely unhappy they'd solved the case.

CSI found the frames of a 38 caliber pistol and a 9mm revolver after hours of sifting through the rubbles washed from the house by the firefighting effort. The determined neighbor watched Lieutenant Newburn break down the door the house, ostensibly looking to loot it. He watched as Sergeant Willis argued with the other fireman and followed him into the house. He said he heard a series of gunshots and neither man came out.

The man cried openly, letting out the pent up fears of the past few days, as he described watching in horror as fire consumed the house, knowing the firemen were probably lying inside dead or mortally wounded, but unwilling to leave his own home unprotected. Charlie sent the man to the station to look at photos of the firefighters, which was a bit of overkill. It was pretty obvious what happened. Newburn was willing to steal and let or set a fire to cover up the theft; Willis wasn't – it turned into a quiet little gunfight between friends. But hey, this was LA, everyone went strapped nowadays even firemen.

"So who gets the damned boat now?" Dani continued grousing about the stupidity of the crime.

"Why? Do you want it?" Charlie winked at her. Dani just smirked at him.

Hours of paperwork awaited them, as they stood side by side listening to the waves lap against the fiberglass pontoons of the boat. The wind whipped around them tossing Dani's hair in her face and a light rain began to fall through the smoky, smog filled sky. The weather had cut everyone a break and showers were predicted through the afternoon and into the following morning. It wouldn't put out the fires, but it would give everyone a must needed respite.

"Are you ever gonna tell me why fire bothers you so bad?" Dani asked.

Charlie sighed. "When I was seven I almost burned down our house" He confessed quietly. "My father beat me within an inch of my life. Broke my nose, several ribs. I was playing with matches, always fascinated by fire, now it only reminds me of a time I wish I could forget."

"Always knew you were a juvenile delinquent" she joked – bypassing the reference to the abusive childhood. It was something they both shared and neither really wanted to talk about.

"Takes one to know one" he bantered back, as they turned and walked away from the marina and headed back to the station to the mountain of paperwork that followed the conclusion of any case.

**********************************************************************************************************************

**Coda……**

Charlie tossed and turned in his large bed. He should be able to sleep. He was exhausted and they'd been going non-stop for the past two days. He rolled to his side facing the window where the ghostly cast from the nearby fires lit the horizon. Even with the air conditioner working full blast he felt the oppressive heat and the burdens of his past. With the case closed he should feel closure, peace and be able to rest, but he found he could not.

Charlie was beyond restless, he was feeling caged, he needed to feel free. It was too hot to sleep, too hot to dream….Nothing seemed able to ease his troubles. The only time the feeling abated was in those moments when Reese was there to beat back the flames. She was like his shade against the heat, cool water and soothing sounds. He missed her presence.

He turned and looked at the clock it read 04:58 in luminous blue digital numbers. _Reese where are you?_ He thought. _What are you doing?_ His earlier phone call to her had done little to assuage his fears that she too was struggling with the heat and unable to rest. His cell phone buzzed in the dark and vibrated across his nightstand. He knew without looking it was her. He answered with a question "can't sleep either huh?"

************************************************************************************************************************

They met for breakfast in a small quiet dinner off the 210 midway between Reese's small apartment in the city and Crews' giant house in the hills. Neither trusted themselves to the other's environs. Dani slid into the booth stiffly and Charlie stood looking at her, deciding.

He was tired of standing on the edge of life – he wanted more.

"Slide over" he said. Dani looked at him for a long moment and did just that. As Charlie slid in beside her, both of them eased. He put his hand along the back of the booth and looked down at her. She leaned into him and they both relaxed for the first time in several days. "I don't know how to do this" he confessed.

The waitress appeared and Charlie ordered them both coffee, she poured them steaming mugs, which sat before them untouched on the table.

Charlie started again only to have Dani stop him. "Don't say anything….just be still….just…."

"….breathe" Charlie finished. Dani sighed acknowledging her assent.

It was as if they were back in that orange grove again and finally able to finish their moment together. They breathed together, slowly matching rhythms and when the waitress returned they slept peacefully, Dani's head rested on Charlie's chest and his chin rested lightly on her head.

The waitress smiled softly, warmed their coffee cups and left them in peace.


End file.
